Creating Entitlements - vRealize Automation Series Part 15

Nov 22, 2014 • Jonathan Frappier

Home stretch, 15 posts and we are about to see our first catalog item published! Lets get going and create the entitlement which is how we define what can be done in vRealize Automation / vCloud Automation Center

We’ve got our reservations done, but so far we haven’t created any catalog items for our Georgia and Alderaan employees to actually request. One of the simplest things to publish in the vRealize Automation / vCloud Automation Center catalog are virtual machine blueprints; which are created from vSphere templates. With our virtual machine converted to a template in vCenter, we should be ready to go.

Log into vRealize Automation as iaasadmin

Click on Infrastructure >> Blueprints >> Machine Prefixes

Create a Prefix like we did for our business groups, call this one nix

Click on Infrastructure >> Compute Resources >> Compute Resources

Hover over cl01 >> Data Collection

Wait a few moments and click the Refresh button at the bottom of the screen; status should be Succeeded

Under Inventory, click Request Now

Log out and log back in as tenantadmin

Click on Infrastructure >> Blueprints >> Blueprints

Hover over New Blueprint >> Virtual >> vSphere (vCenter)

Fill in the build information similar to below

Click the Build Information Tab

Change Action to Clone

Click the ellipse next to Clone From and select your linux template and click the OK button

For testing in the lab, leave everything else as is and click the OK button at the bottom of the page

Hover over the new Blueprint, click on Publish then click OK

Navigate to Administration >> Catalog Management >>Services

Click the Add button, name it Clone Linux Template, set it to Active, and click the Add button

Highlight the new service and click the Manage Catalog Items button

Click the green + icon, select CentOS-Template and click Add

Click Close

Almost there I promise, now that the blueprint, service and catalog item is created, we just need to provide entitlements so our users can see it!

VMware Application Services (formerly Application Director) is now deployed, but we need to do a bit more integration with vRealize Automation / vCloud Automation Center so we can publish Application Services blueprints to the vRealize Automation catalog. First we need to define a cloud provider;

While logged in as Luke, the user we gave all of the Application Services roles to, click on the Applications pull down menu and select Cloud Providers

Click the Create Cloud Provider button/box

Click the Cloud Provider Type pull down and notice what options are available - vCloud 5.x, vCAC and EC2. What about vCloud Air - can we use that? If you said yes you are correct because vCloud Air is based on vCloud Director.

Enter the information like so (note some of the boxes appear "greyed out" - they are not, just a poor choice for background colors) and click the Validate Connection button

Notice that you have to use an upper case domain, I'm curious as to why but in any case its the only way that worked for me

Next in the lower half of the screen (not pictured above) in the templates section, click the green plus icon

You should see the CentOS-Template catalog item we previously published in the vRealize Automation catalog; click the check mark next to the desired template and click OK

Click the Save button in the upper right hand corner

We now have the first step in setting up Application Services complete, up next we will create a Deployment Enviornment